Il Mulino - Rivisteweb Julian Go Globalizing Sociology, Turning South. Perspectival Realism and the Southern Standpoint (doi: 10.2383/85279) Sociologica (ISSN 1971-8853) Fascicolo 2, maggio-agosto 2016 Copyright c by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. Tutti i diritti sono riservati. Per altre informazioni si veda https://www.rivisteweb.it Licenza d uso L articolo è messo a disposizione dell utente in licenza per uso esclusivamente privato e personale, senza scopo di lucro e senza fini direttamente o indirettamente commerciali. Salvo quanto espressamente previsto dalla licenza d uso Rivisteweb, è fatto divieto di riprodurre, trasmettere, distribuire o altrimenti utilizzare l articolo, per qualsiasi scopo o fine. Tutti i diritti sono riservati.
Essays Globalizing Sociology, Turning South Perspectival Realism and the Southern Standpoint by Julian Go doi: 10.2383/85279 1. Introduction An intellectual revolution against the provinciality of social science has begun. The premise of this revolution is that disciplinary sociology s concerns, categories and theories have been formulated, forged, and enacted within Anglo-European metropoles in the interest of those metropolitan societies, and so a new global sociology that transcends this provinciality is necessary. The institutional dimension of this project involves a critical reconsideration of the inequalities between the wealthy universities of the United States and Europe and the poorer institutions in the Global South [Patel 2014]. But the intellectual dimension is also crucial. How can we craft sociologies that escape sociology s Anglo-European provenance? Ulrich Beck [Beck 2006; Beck and Sznaider 2010] urges sociology to reach beyond the confines of methodological nationalism and reorient itself as a cosmopolitan project. Behbehanian and Burawoy [2011] suggest that sociology should reach beyond its provincialism by scaling up the concept of civil society in order to analyze global civil society. These calls join long-standing pleas for social theory to shift its analytic focus from Europe to the entire world-system, to the various civilizations and multiple modernities that traverse the world-system, or to the connected histories by which modernity has been constituted [Bhambra 2007, 2013 and 2014b; Go 2013d; Eisenstadt 2000; Wallerstein 1996 and 1997]. Sociologica, 2/2016 - Copyright 2016 by Società editrice il Mulino, Bologna. 1
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South This paper advances an alternative analytic strategy for overcoming sociology s provinciality and cultivating a more global social science. I refer to this strategy as the Southern Standpoint, and I ground it in a philosophical framework I call perspectival realism. Rather than beginning by rescaling eisting theoretical categories (e.g. civil society ), proliferating differences based upon eisting concepts (e.g. multiple modernities), or tracking economic or social connections (e.g. world-systems or connected histories), this strategy begins by attending to the concerns, categories, eperiences and practices of subaltern subjects at the bottom of global hierarchies. This is a social science from below; a sociology that starts not with the standpoint of the metropole but the standpoint of subjugated groups. There are two thus moves here: one, to eplicate the basic idea of the Southern standpoint for overcoming sociology s provincialism, and two, rooting that strategy in an epistemological and ontological frame perspectival realism that renders this strategy feasible and desirable. As for the first move, the Southern Standpoint approach proposed in the present essay is a friendly etension of an already-eisting intellectual movement partly emerging from the Global South. This movement can be variously called Southern Theory, epistemologies of the South, or indigenous sociology. It has received renewed attention of late, but it has a longer history. 1 We could trace it back to some strands of postcolonial theory in the humanities, for instance, and before that, to the anticolonial thought of writers like Du Bois, Fanon, and Cesaire [Go 2013d]. As Connell [2007] suggests, it also includes work since the 1980s by African sociologists to indigenize sociology [Akiwowo 1986] and Alatas s [2006a] concept of alternative discourses in sociology. The latest incarnation, which has received increasing attention in recent years, is seen in work by Connell [2007], Sousa Santos [2014], Jean and John Comaroff [2012] and those working in the decolonial school such as Mignolo [2000]. Though this is a diverse movement, it is united around a critique of the parochial Northern or Eurocentric character of conventional sociology and an injunction to transcend it. It therefore marks an alternative to the foregoing approaches that promote cosmopolitanism, global civil society, the world-system, civilizations, or multiple modernities as the dominant orienting categories for a global sociology. It instead seeks to harvest knowledges from the Global South and thereby cultivate alternative sociologies that can be then articulated together. 2 1 For overviews or eamples of what I am covering under the term indigenous sociology, besides those discussed below, include Chilisa [2012], Connell [2006; 2007], Keim [2008; 2011], Patel [2006; 2010a] and Sitas [2004]. The Comaroffs offer a different notion of Southern Theory, which they call Theory from the South, but this is not so much theory that comes from the South as it is theorized about the South [Comaroff and Comaroff 2012]. 2 Scholars see the end result of this Southern approach differently: for some, like Sousa Santos 2
Sociologica, 2/2016 While the Southern Standpoint approach advanced in the present essay draws upon this indigenous sociology/southern theory movement, it also surmounts it by first overcoming some of the intellectual barriers upheld against it. It is notable, for eample, that the indigenous sociology/southern theory movement is not new. It is long-standing. This should make us wonder: why has the movement not resonated sufficiently to transform the theoretical landscape? Why must sociology s Anglo-European provenance and its limitations be repeated over and over again over the course of decades even? Surely, part of the problem is institutional: Southern theory challenges mainstream sociology, which will always fend off barbarians at its gates, and which has the resources to do so. But it is also the case that there are substantive intellectual barriers that have yet to be confronted and surmounted. Skeptics rightfully wonder, for instance, whether indigenous sociology and Southern theory inscribe a reverse essentialism, promote epistemic relativism, or overlook structural forces, institutions and global patterns. Such critiques have long plagued the movement, and in as much as they have not yet been tackled or absorbed, the movement cannot advance. Hence the second step in developing the Southern Standpoint as a basis for global sociology: to advance a philosophy of knowledge I call perspectival realism as an ontology and epistemology upon which to mount the Southern standpoint approach. This approach draws upon scientific perspectivism in science studies and post-foundationalist standpoint theory as found in postcolonial and recent feminist thought. My claim is that this philosophical framework enables us to advance a Southern standpoint approach that draws upon the indigenous sociology and Southern theory movement without resorting to essentialism or relativism. Below I first briefly outline the calls for global sociology and how different approaches have tried to meet them. I then discuss the Southern standpoint approach and perspectival realism before turning to two theoretical eamples to concretize the approach: the theoretical innovations of Franz Fanon and Raúl Prebisch. [2014] and Sousa Santos et al. [2008], it creates a pluriverse of knowledges. For others, it forms the basis for a kaleidoscopic dialectic [Rehbein 2015] or connected sociologies [Bhambra 2014b] that put the different southern perspectives into conversation with each other. The question of how they can converse or circulate is debated [Keim et al. 2014] but, regardless, all of these approaches depend first and foremost upon the project of cultivating local, indigenous or Southern sociologies. 3
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South 2. The Provincialism of Sociological Knowledge What eactly is the motivation for a more global social science? Those who advocate indigenous sociology/southern theory share with others who call for global sociology a simple recognition: social science is provincial. It is provincial in the sense that it was first formed and institutionalized in the contet of industrializing Anglo- European societies in order to meet the specific needs of those societies [Wallerstein 1996, 23]. Even more to the point, it was formulated and promoted to meet the particular the needs in those societies of a specific group: the white male élite. As Connell [2007, 14] reminds us, sociology developed in a specific social location: among the men of the metropolitan liberal bourgeoisie in the Nineteenth and early Twentieth centuries. This original orientation of social science has shaped sociology s categories, theories and research. We know, for eample, that the very Comptean idea of the social, as a space distinct from the natural or the religious, was taken up by white European males in the face of threats to social order. Amidst the tumult of Nineteenth century crises in Europe, social theories emerged as eplanations of and remedies for the increasingly violent demands of labour, natives and women [Owens 2015, 18-19]. In the early Twentieth century, sociology in the US, along with other social sciences in formation, was oriented around social evolutionism and questions about the race struggle, immigration, urbanization and industrialization all of which embedded the concerns of metropolitan élites [Breslau 2007; Connell 1997; Go 2013a e 2013c; Vitalis 2010]. And because sociology was founded and institutionalized within imperial metropoles at the height of imperialism, it also means that early sociological theory and methods adopted an imperial gaze that theorized non-western populations through racialized lenses that essentialized and homogenized those populations while occluding alternative perspectives, not least those of W.E.B Du bois [Boatcâ 2013; Connell 1997; Seidman 1996 and 2013; Bhambra 2014a; Morris 2015; Zimmerman 2006]. Today, sociology does not necessarily or directly partake of the older imperial episteme, but its legacies persist. According to Wallerstein [1997] among others, for eample, Eurocentrism persists in sociology in various forms. 3 One of these forms is metrocentrism: the tendency to take the categories, concepts, and theories developed 3 And even when not intellectually Eurocentric, there remains a global hierarchy of privilege, whereby social science is produced primarily in the Global North, thereby reflecting the concerns and viewpoint of the Anglo-European metropoles [Burawoy 2010; Wallerstein 1996]. 4
Sociologica, 2/2016 and deployed of and for the specificities of Anglo-European modernity and uncritically apply them everywhere [Go 2013a and 2013d]. Despite its provincial origins, sociology thus purports to have universal status while denying its own parochiality. As Keim eplains: General sociological theory, by definition encompasses in the scope of its statements any society, North or South, and claims to be valid for all of them equally [2008, 562]. Sociology, the so-called Science of society pretends to produce generally valid, universal statements, concepts and theories, but it is actually distorted because the claim for universality so far has been formulated from a Eurocentric perspective [Ibidem, 559]. 4 One among many problematic results is that colonized, postcolonial, and Southern societies are treated analytically as a lesser version of western societies that are held up as the model system [Krause 2016]. To the degree that, from a Western perspective, the Global South is embraced by modernity at all, eplain Comaroff and Comaroff [2012] of this view, it is as an outside that requires translation, mutation, conversation, catch-up [Ibidem, 2]. And the problem here is not simply that this metrocentrism mades subaltern peoples look bad. It is that it arguably impedes a richer understanding of social processes and social relations in other societies. The concepts and theories analytically domesticate the rest of the world into their narrow fold, thereby possibly blinding us to a range of important processes and relations going on in these diverse contets. Eamples of metrocentrism abound. The tendency in the 1960s and 1970s to transpose modernization theory, modeled after the so-called development of metropoles, to other societies is a prime eample [Gilman 2003; Rostow 1960]. But 4 As Keim [2008, 559] warns further, according to the assumptions of social theory: The social realities of the Southern hemisphere are thus always thought of as fitting into a universally valid scheme produced elsewhere. It thereby blurs the distinction between the universal and the particular, equating the North-Atlantic particular with the universal [Keim 2008, 562]. Wallerstein notes how European social science universalism ends up asserting that whatever happened in Europe in the Siteenth to Nineteenth centuries is applicable everywhere [1997, 93]. 5
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South there are many other eamples. Connell [2006], in her sustained critique of what she calls Northern theory that is, theory that embeds the viewpoints, perspectives and problems of metropolitan society, while presenting itself as universal knowledge [Ibidem, vii-viiii] gives the so-called structure-agency problem as one such eample [Connell 2006]. 5 This is a dominant issue in North American and European social science, inviting theorists like Giddens [1986], Bourdieu [1977] and Sewell [1992] among others to try to solve it. It is subsequently taught in many contemporary sociology courses. So why are we bothered with this theoretical construction, such that we apply to all social situations everywhere? Whence does it come, ecept from within metropolitan societies? And why is agency in this debate theorized mainly in terms of individual capacities, consciousness or intentionality, which is a very specific way of thinking about agency that occludes group action and the agency of non-humans? According to Connell [2006], the answer is that it is because the metropolitan societies of its birth have special privilege. They are not eploited from the outside or politically managed as colonies. The standpoint is one of power. And bourgeois individualism is the norm and value. The terms of the structure-agency debate thus emerges from this particular contet, and the fatal flaw of Northern Theory comes when it transposes its concerns and categories developed in this particular contet of intellectual habitus, and formulated from the standpoint of power to the peripheral world, where the local eperience and contet is different. After all, peripheral societies do not occupy the seat of power. They have been subjected to foreign imposition or colonization. They have been and are constrained in ways that are peculiar. To transpose the categories and concerns of metropolitan sociology (whether of structure/agency or rational choice) runs the risk of occluding important things going on in those societies. It is, in short, the realization of the analytic dangers of metrocentrism which follow from sociology s unproblematized parochiality. 3. Routes to a Global Sociology: From Rescaling to Turning South The project for global sociology emerges in full or at least in part from these critiques. The goal is to transcend the provinciality of conventional sociology in Euro 5 This universal pretension comes in the form of social theory s abstraction or contet-free generalization: Social science usually prefers contet-free generalization. Special prestige accrues to a theory which is so abstracted that its statements seem universally true [Connell 2007, 196]. And the problem with Northern Theory is not that it seeks generalizability. It is rather that the source of generalization is provincial but Northern Theory claims universality. 6
Sociologica, 2/2016 American contets and make sociology more adequate for a global setting [Bhambra 2013 and 2014b; Burawoy 2010; Keim et al. 2014; Patel 2010a and 2014]. But if there is agreement on the problem and the goal, there is less agreement on the route. Some suggest to globalize sociology by shifting our geographic focus, either away from European societies and towards non-western societies or upwards to capture global social forms. As is well-known, Wallerstein s world-systems theory was meant eactly to shift our provincial lens away from Western nation-states to the world-system as a whole [Wallerstein 2004]. Those who are not interested in the economism of this approach turn to other theories and concepts. Beck and his colleagues argue that we need to pen up perspectives on the world beyond Europe [Beck and Grande 2010, 411], and therefore suggest that the way to do so is through methodological cosmopolitanism rather than methodological nationalism. This means recognizing the plural character of modernity and tracing the multiplicity of modernization paths, of Western and non-western eperiences and projects [Beck and Grande 2010, 412]. Others, inspired by the seminal work of Eisenstadt [1986 and 1987], similarly call for a multiple modernities approach and for a recognition of diverse civilizations and their particular social formations and cultural systems [Eisenstadt 2000; Spohn 2011]. Meanwhile, Burawoy invites sociologists to embark upon global ethnographies that look at the impact and operations of global capitalism upon diverse locations through the etended case method [Burawoy 1998 and 2000]. Most recently, Behbehanian and Burawoy [2011] call for a third stage of sociological analysis that is more adequate to the globalized world in which sociology now eists. Whereas sociology s first stage studied communities, and its second stage studied nation-states, the third stage studies the world from the standpoint of global civil society. 6 The indigenous sociology/southern theory movement points to a different path. Foreground the problem of metrocentrism, this movement would arguably be critical of even the foregoing attempts to globalize sociology. Take Wallerstein s [1997] world-systems analysis. While scaling up the concept society to cover the entire world through a Marist perspective might help overcome the Eurocentric focus upon Western societies, it does not overcome metrocentrism. For Wallerstein, what he calls the world-system first develops in Europe and then spreads to the rest of the world, and in as much as the theory parallels in logic what capitalism purportedly did 6 For alternative readings of sociology s history which do not fall along these methodologically-nationalist lines can be found in Go [2013a and 2013c], Kennedy and Centeno [2007], Steinmetz [2013]. 7
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South in history, the theory retains a questionable universalism. This is the same problem pinpointed by postcolonial thinkers and theorists of critical race studies who critique certain strands of Marist thought on similar grounds. Had not Mar based his entire theory of capitalism upon the eperience of white workers in England, who confront their employers (behind the hidden abode ) in a situation of free wage labor? He developed his theory of value not from looking at slave labor on the colonial plantation but instead by looking behind the hidden abode of the English factory door. His brief discussion of primitive accumulation as it occurred in the non-european world was an aberration, a deviation from the supposedly pure form of value etraction which was modeled after English factory production. Cedric Robinson, in his seminal work Black Marism [2000] which could be seen as a precursory and corollary to Southern theory, points out the provinciality of Mar s theory in this sense. The masses whom Mar presumed would be seized by theory were European male wage labors and artisans in the metropoles of Western Europe, Britain and the United States [Robinson 2000, viii]. 7 From the perspective of indigenous sociology/southern theory, Beck s solution of globalizing sociology through methodological cosmopolitanism would run into the same criticism, for it too universalizes the particular. Beck models his cosmopolitanism after the European Union and élite eperiences in Europe. This is meant to be the way to epistemically globalize sociology, by universalizing from European eperiences? The same goes for attempts to pluralize modernities by studying multiple or alternative modernities. The attempt is noble but, as critics aver, it remains metrocentric in its conception if not in spirit. So-called multiple or alternative modernities turn out to be merely variants of European modernity, emerging initially from Western civilization and then diffusing to other civilizations [Bhambra 2007, 67]. The approach thereby marshals an essentialism that would make Orientalists blush with pride. Dirlik points out that the approach is an improvement over an earlier Eurocentric modernization discourse [but] it perpetuates the culturalist biases of the latter, relegating to the background social and political differences that are the products not just of past legacies but of modernity, and cut across national or civilizational boundaries [Dirlik 2003, 285]. 7 Recall that, in Mar s view, Adam Smith carried out a form of fetishism because he transposed the categories and theories specific to one society, capitalist society such as those relating to rational actorhood and homo economicus or supply and demand to all societies in the world, etending them back to pre-capitalist societies. It is telling that Mar s term fetishism derived from Europeans colonial encounters with Africans. 8
Sociologica, 2/2016 Sousa Santos [2012], foremost proponent of epistemologies of the South, likewise questions the universalization of the public sphere concept. The concept, he avers, reflects the political practices of the European bourgeoisie at the beginning of the Eighteenth century, such that its theoretical and cultural presuppositions are entirely European: it is based on the individual bourgeois and life eperience; it assumes the separation between the state and civil society; it sees the bourgeois citizen and his public sphere as eternal to the structure of power; it takes for granted its informal and equal inclusiveness its dynamic component is the reasonable discussion and a culturally shared discourse ; political action consists of political discussion, not political action and transformation. These presuppositions are today highly problematical, even in the global North [2012, 44]. Entailed in this charge is an implicit critique of attempts to globalize sociology by rooting it from the standpoint of civil society [Behbehanian and Burawoy 2011]. Globalizing sociology cannot be done simply by universalizing Anglo-European concepts. 8 So what, then, is the alternative? The solution offered by indigenous sociology/southern theory is to turn South. The indigenous sociology, or alternative discourses approach since the 1980s, initiated the strategy. 9 The idea was to draw upon the eperiences and folk wisdom of peoples in the South as the basis for new theorizing; or to draw upon Southern intellectuals who think in terms of local categories and concerns. Akiwowo s initial intervention [1986 and 1999] represents the former. Aiming to counter Eurocentric social science and reorient the discipline to African reality, he drew upon ritual oral poetry in Yoruba as the basis for a new sociology [Akiwowo 1986, 67]. He thereby ecavated the idea of asuwada, or the clumping of diverse iwa (beings) as the key new concept. Founded in the intellectual soil of a non-western community, the concept emphasizes social bonds of self-sacrifice and spiritual commitments, as opposed to bourgeois individualism, and therefore is more appropriate to African communities, according to Akiwowo [1999, 119-120; see also Sitas 2004]. The work of Syed F. Alatas [2006a and 2006b] is another eample of the movement, but he suggested to draw foremost upon Southern intellectuals rather 8 On the other hand, this sort of geo-critique should not be entirely controversial. When critics confront Bourdieu s theory of culture or cultural fields, for instance, one common critique is that it is too French: i.e. bound to the particularities of the French contet which birthed it. If this is a valid critique, why not also ponder the particularities or, more precisely, the provinciality of sociology? Bourdieu and Wacquant [1999] themselves speak of how certain concepts (like race ) are imposed upon other societies problematically, which they call the cunning of imperialist reason. 9 It also parallels, and in some way prefigures, the movement in philosophy for decolonial theory Mignolo [2000]. 9
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South than folk concepts. To formulate alternative sociologies not rooted in European eperiences, Alatas suggests that thinkers indigenous to colonial and postcolonial societies offer a way out. They produce alternative (sociological) discourses [that] constitute a revolt against intellectual imperialism [2006a, 81]. Alatas thereby turns to thinkers like the Islamic philosopher Ibn Khaldūn (1332 1406 AD), showing how Khaldūn s theory of state-formation is grounded in the history of the Arabs and Berbers of North Africa and therefore might be useful for studying state-formation in non-western contets [Alatas 2010 and 2006b]. In short, rather than relying solely on a handful of theories from Northern theorists, this version of indigenous sociology urges sociologists to look elsewhere [Patel 2010a]. Instead of Ma Weber for insights on the societies of the Middle East, we should instead turn to Abd al-rahmān Ibn Khaldūn; or instead of just Karl Mar to think about Latin America, we might instead look at Simon Bolivar, Jose Martí, Octavio Paz or more recent thinkers like Nestor García Canclini [Kozlarek 2013]. Or rather than using Foucault to eamine Indian society, we should heed the insights of Ashis Nandy or Benoy Kumar Sarkar [Goswami 2013]. A more recent intellectual movement, which we might think of the Southern Theory movement, builds upon these seminal steps. Sousa Santos [2012] represents one version, seeking to overcome Eurocentrism by turning to subjugated knowledges from the South that have been repressed through epistemicide. [If] the theories produced in the global North are best equipped to account for the social, political and cultural realities of the global North, [then] in order adequately to account for the realities of the global South other theories must be developed and anchored in other epistemologies the epistemologies of the South [2012, 45]. Sousa Santos thus calls attention to the immense variety of critical discourses and practices in the world [2014, 42], with special attention to the critical discourse and practices of those who have suffered at the bottom of global hierarchy. We must retrieve the valid knowledges of those social groups that have suffered, in a systematic way, the oppression and discrimination caused by capitalism and colonialism [Sousa Santos 2012, 51]. Connell [2013] likewise turns to the South to subvert the structures of Northern hegemony in world social science and recover subjugated knowledges: the insights, wisdom and eperiences of subjugated groups. These local insights offer the possibility of constructing dirty theory; that is, concepts and theories rooted in the eperiences and interests of the postcolonial Global South rather than upon the 10
Sociologica, 2/2016 confines of North American or European terrain. Connell makes the argument by referring to Aikowowo and Alatas s projects, as discussed above. She also discusses the Subaltern Studies project in India, the Cepalism-dependency theory framework from Latin America, and others [Connell 2007 and 2013]. Connell does not valorize these approaches as the sole solution: she criticizes each of their weaknesses. But she points to them as eamples of theory that begins from local eperience and thereby as theories that warrant more consideration than they are typically given. 10 For eample, rather than start our sociologies from the binaries and categories of Northern theory, like structure-agency, she suggests that paying attention to the concerns and eperiences of those in the Global South would lead us to different starting points, such as eperiences of colonial subjugation or dispossession from the land. These eperiences have been foundational for many people in the Global South, but they are either occluded or undertheorized in Northern sociology [Connell 2007, 206-207]. Southern theory must fill the gap. In short, the solution for globalizing sociology is as elegant as it is deceitfully simple. If, for too long, sociologists have relied upon theories constructed from and directed at the concerns and categories of Euro-American contets, this movement proposes to shift or even unseat the canon entirely. But rather than doing so by simply etending or scaling up prior categories and theories developed in relation to the Global North such as cosmopolitanism or civil society sociology should go native, turning to the eperience, practices, and voices of subaltern populations and thinkers in the Global South to cultivate a more global sociology. But what are the limits and possibilities of this approach? 4. The Limits of Indigenous/Southern Sociology Part of the issue with the indigenous/southern theory solution is that it has been subjected to numerous criticisms. These warrant attention, because they arguably undercut the promising power of the approach unless they are confronted head-on. The first criticism points to the seemingly limited lens of indigenous sociology. Because indigenous sociology appears to be grounded in the standpoint of individuals, it fails to illuminate larger institutions or structures. Bhambra [2007] worries that subaltern scholars run the risk of failing to provide an account of the systematic relations of domination [Ibidem, 29]. 10 For an ecellent debate on Connell s Southern Theory, see the book forum in Political Power and Social Theory, volume 25 [2013], whit commentaries by Patricia Hill Collins, Raka Ray, Isaac Reed, and Mustafa Emirbayer. 11
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South How do Yoruban concepts unearthed from deep oral traditions help us grasp the global logics of capitalist domination? How can theories or concepts derived from particular local contets speak to global social processes? This relates to the related problem: does not a local sociology resort to particularism, crafting social knowledge that is only relevant for grossly limited contets and hence not generalizable? Social knowledge requires generalizability but indigenous sociology emphasizing as it does the particular, the local, the specific seems to offer precious little by way of offering generalizable concepts. Put differently, if Anglo- European social theory falls short because of its provinciality, would not indigenous sociology suffer from the eact same problem? 11 At best, we would end up merely a plethora of particularisms, as Burawoy [2014, vi] worries. Another problem has to do with the rationale for what counts as indigenous or Southern sociology. Burawoy summarizes usefully: If there is a Southern sociology then what makes it Southern and sociological? [2010, 14] Too often, proponents of these approaches are silent on this issue. At most, adjudication is based upon identity: if a thinker or sociologist comes from the global South, then their sociology is Southern. 12 But does not the idea of a Southern or indigenous thinker presume a cultural essentialism? Or, in regards to Sousa Santos [2014] attempt to locate alternative epistemologies in the Global South, is an epistemology alternative just because it comes from Brazil? Santos argues that The West, or global North, claims the right to the dominant view of the world. But, on the other hand, the global South is entitled to have its own view of the world (and of the global North) [Sousa Santos 2012, 45]. But it is unclear how to adjudicate whether a view of the world is from the South or from the North. Does Portugal count as Southern too? Note the irony if these questions are not addressed: heralding Southern as opposed to Northern or metropolitan theory itself reproduces the very binary essentialism that this approach laments [Burawoy 2010: 13-15; Sitas 2006, 363]. 13 It likewise threatens to es 11 For these sorts of criticisms against Akiwowo s sociology, see Albrow and King [1990] and Patel [2010b]. Some of these criticisms, as noted below, echo the critiques of feminist epistemology in sociology, such as those registered by Holmwood [1995] among many others. Reed [2013] makes the important point that Southern Theory has yet to generate transportable middle-range concepts and theories. 12 On worldly warrant as opposed to the aperspectival warrant, see Kukla and Ruetsche [2002]. 13 The same sort of criticism is found in Chibber s [2013] reading of postcolonial theory more broadly: the problem, he says, is that postcolonial theory rests upon the very essentialization of difference which it supposedly criticizes. 12
Sociologica, 2/2016 sentialize the cultures of the South in the same way that Orientalism does, thereby replacing Eurocentrism with Afro- or Asian-centrism and reifying cultural difference [Hanafi 2016]. The critique by Sitas is to the point: The peripheral sociologist s claims for difference and differentiation rotate usually around meaning or culture, around a distinct life world or around values and norms. Asserting such differences is hardly liberatory because that sphere has been the domain and hunting ground of colonial anthropology the discipline that not only understood but came to define the cultural other: the tribal or the native [ ]. Those others of colonial rule are defined by their unique essential cultures, their ways of life, their dialectical antitheses to modernity [Sitas 2006, 363]. A final criticism is that the epistemic warrant for indigenous or Southern theory is obscure at best, which renders it subject to various shortcomings. Conventional sociological positivists base their claims upon rules that are presumably objective, scientific, and hence universal. This is the aperspectival warrant, grounded in the assumption of the possibility of and desirability for the Cartesian subject. Southern theory, by its critique of metropolitan knowledge and its attempt to universalize its knowledge to the entire world, would seem to reject this. But what, then, is the alternative? Proponents of Southern theory implicitly suggest that all theories from the South are inherently better, at least better than knowledge from the North, but only because of they are from the South. Bhambra [2007, 60-62] thus criticizes this approach on the grounds that it insinuates a problematic epistemic privilege which in turn runs into the problem of essentialism problem noted above. Arjomand adds: Our concern should not be with the ethnic identity and geographical location of social scientists and public intellectuals, but with comparisons of the concepts used to understand the phenomena and developmental patterns of the metropolitan and peripheral regions of the world [2008, 549]. If not grounded in essentialism, what is the other alternative epistemic warrant? The only other response would be to get rid of any notion of epistemic privilege rooted in identity and instead resort to subjectivism and epistemic relativism. If we refuse positivism or identity-based essentialist warrants for knowledge, we are left without criteria for adjudicating knowledge claims, ecept for appeals to plurality and multiplicity or what Sousa Santos [2008] calls a pluriverse. The problem is that objectivity is then impossible; indeed truth is impossible. All we are left with are multiple perspectives from various Southern locations, and so turning South does not yield better knowledge, only relativist knowledge which can never be validated [McLennan 2013]. Skeptics rightfully wonder: can theorizing from the standpoint of 13
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South Yoruba poetry yield anything universally valid or scientific at all? Is social scientific truth still obtainable? Is truth at all possible? If the answer is no, the irony is that we do not even have grounds for claiming that there is social injustice, domination, or eploitation at all; nor even that there is such a thing as Eurocentric theory in the first place. 5. The Southern Standpoint As Perspectival Realism What, then, can be done? Are we back to the attempts to rescale eisting theories and concepts drawn from the North as the solution for global sociology? My suggestion is to draw eactly from the Southern theory/indigenous sociology movement but articulate it with a distinct ontology and epistemology that can absorb the foregoing criticisms of the movement. I refer to this approach not as Southern theory but the Southern standpoint. I use the term standpoint deliberately in order to signal an affiliation with post-foundationalist feminist standpoint theory and standpoint theory as developed in the philosophy of science [Harding 2004a and 2004b]. Standpoint theory highlights the social situatedness of knowledge and feminist standpoint theory in particular theorizes the gendered position of the knower. By Southern standpoint, then, I mean a social position of knowing akin to a feminist standpoint but one that is rooted not necessarily in gender but rather in geopolitics and global social hierarchy. It is captures the position, and hence the activities, eperiences, concerns and perspectives, of globally peripheral (e.g. colonized and postcolonized) populations. 14 A Southern standpoint approach for global sociology would thus overcome metrocentrism by adopting the Southern standpoint as the beginning point for social theory, just as indigenous/southern sociology would suggest. While this approach draws upon the Southern theory/indigenous sociology approach, it also mounts it upon a particular ontology and epistemology that can manage critiques against it. My claim is that this move is absolutely necessary for overcoming the critiques of the indigenous/southern theory movement noted above. Part of the reason for the proliferation of criticisms against the movement is that the latter has not made its philosophy of social knowledge its ontology and epistemology sufficiently eplicit, nor has it systematized it. For eample, criticisms that it tends towards relativism suggest that Southern theory/indigenous sociology is radically constructivist; that its critical suspicion of the positivism affiliated with Euro-American 14 Obviously, in the contet of gendered global capitalism today, women would be part of if not constitutive of the southern standpoint. The key point here is that the southern standpoint is a relational status. 14
Sociologica, 2/2016 social science evinces the claim that all knowledge is merely a constructed tool of power. Is this the case? Few if any answers are provided in the eisting discussions of indigenous sociology and Southern theory. My own approach systematizes an ontology and epistemology that, I argue, is appropriate to the Southern theory/indigenous sociology movement. I refer to this as perspectival realism, which draws upon scientific perspectivism in STS and the philosophy of sciences and articulates it with post-positivist standpoint theory. 15 6. Perspectival Realism What I refer to perspectival realism can be seen as an etension of scientific perspectivism an ontology of scientific knowledge and practice that emerges from science studies and philosophies of science. Leading advocates of scientific perspectivism include the philosophers Ronald Giere [2006] and Helen Longino [2006]. Scientific perspectivism offers us at least two important insights for our purposes. First, it enables us to find a middle ground between the etremism of objective realism on the one hand, and radical constructivism in science on the other. While objective realism insists that there are truths in the world to be discovered and that the truths primarily come in the form of laws, constructivism holds that truths are discursively (i.e. socially) constructed by scientists (e.g. before the word planet entered the scientific leicon, planets did not eist) [Giere 2006, 4-7]. Scientific perspectivism claims that what scientific inquiry and research actually shows us is that truths are the convergence of the physical world on the one hand and the scientists perspective on the other and that, therefore, the perspective of the scientist-observer is paramount. The claim, in short, is that knowledge is always perspectival yet also objective. Knowledge arises neither from pure objectivity or subjectivity but from the convergence of the observer s perspective and the objective world. Giere s main eample is color vision [Ibidem]. Whereas color objectivism claims that colors eist in the world, and are inherent in physical properties, and whereas color subjectivism theorizes color as inherent to the observer, the fact of the matter is that color is a convergence of perspective and the physical properties of that being seen. Color does emerge from physical stimuli in the world, but which color is seen depends upon the perspective of the observer. For instance, most humans are trichomats; they see with 15 In offering perspectival realism as the epistemic frame of Southern Theory, the goal is not to displace Southern Theory or offer an alternative interpretation. The point is to marshal support for it by revealing what I argue are its often implicit foundations. 15
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South the aid of three receptors. But some humans are dichromats, and they actually see different colors. And animals that have more than three receptors see more colors than do humans. Colors are real enough, he says, but their reality is perspectival [Ibidem, 14]. Another eample is modern astronomy. In modern astronomic practice, different observational instruments or what Giere [Ibidem, 48] calls means of observation are necessarily used to perceive the cosmos, which involves capturing certain gamma rays. Astronomers use different instruments, and each instrument generates a different image of the same thing: such as the Milky Way. The Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Eperiment (OSSE) produces a different image of the center of the Milky Way than does the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO): the two instruments respectively offer different perspectives on the same thing [Ibidem, 44-48]. As Giere eplains: Humans and various other electromagnet detectors respond differently to different electromagnetic spectra. Moreover, humans and various other electromagnetic detectors may face the same spectrum of electromagnetic radiation and yet have different responses to it. [ ] Each detector views the electromagnetic world from its own perspective. Every observation is perspectival in this sense [Ibidem, 48]. The second insight of scientific perspectivism is related: since knowledge is always perspectival yet objective, there can be multiple truths. Knowledge is always partial. The image of the center of the Milky Way produced from OSSE is no less, or no more true, than the image produced by the CGRO. They are just different instruments capturing the same reality but capturing different parts of it. They each capture a part of reality, offering partial knowledge. Even models in biology or chemistry, Giere eplains, are known to capture only limited aspects of the world, leaving many unknown interactions to prevent any significant model from being eactly correct [Ibidem, 67]. Therefore, he insists, not only is scientific observation perspectival, but also [ ] there are multiple perspectives from which one must choose and no objectively correct choice [Ibidem, 56]. The human eye or thirty power telescopes: they are just different perspectives on the same thing, and each is true. They each capture different aspects of the same reality, because their perspectives are different. 16 16 Even so-called scientific advances are not necessarily the same thing as getting a more 16
Sociologica, 2/2016 Here, maps are good eamples. Giere points out that knowledge always comes in the form of some kind of representational models, and these models, or theories, are eactly like maps [Ibidem, 59]. They are always perspectival, aimed a particular purpose, and offer a partial view of the thing or object they seek to represent and they can never represent everything about it. A map of the London subway system is meant to allow someone to use the subway. It will thus be different of a road map of London, which is meant for someone to walk or drive through the city. Both will be different from a map of London s main buildings, which is meant for tourists to visit London s sites. They are each equally true, but only relative to their purpose. And they are each partial. A map of London s buildings says little to nothing about the subway; nor does can it even represent everything about London s buildings. It does not, for instance, represent the height of the buildings. We could, of course, try to put all of these things on a single map, but even that would not fully represent London. What about the trees in London and their relative density? What about the sewer system? As Giere concludes: the only perfect map of a territory would be the territory itself, which would no longer be a map at all [Ibidem, 73]. My proposition is that social knowledge is also subject to the same epistemological principles, and that recognizing this offers a warrant for a Southern standpoint approach. But to make this work, we must be able to etend scientific perspectivism to apply to social science. In eisting scholarship, scientific perspectivism applies to the natural sciences only. So how can we translate it into sociology? In particular, we must ask: where do the different perspectives that ultimately yield new knowledge come from? For Giere, the different perspectives arise from different means of observation or instruments. What about social science? Drawing upon post-positivist standpoint theory (and related developments in Science and Technology Studies that emphasize the social situated-ness of knowledge), I argue that the social science equivalent to what Giere refers to as perspective is the social entry point of analysis; or, in other words, the standpoint of analysis. It is here where post-positivist standpoint theory helps. 17 objective truth. Giere summons Galileo: Before the Seventeenth century, the Milky Way, as part of a commonsense perspective on the world, was perceived using human eyes simply as a broad band of light etending across the night sky. From the perspective of Galileo s roughly thirty power telescopes, it was perceived as being made up of a very large number of individual starts. But this was a change in perspective, not a move from a mere perspective to objective truth [Giere 2006, 58]. 17 One different contender for a parallel in social science for what Giere calls perspective are different measurement devices [Callon, Millo and Muniesa 2007]. This is also worth considering, 17
Go, Globalizing Sociology, Turning South 7. Post-Positivist Standpoint Theory I stress post-positivist standpoint theory to differentiate it from conventional or positivist feminist standpoint theory that, in turn, is rooted in Hegel s masterslave dialectic. 18 In the relationship between master and slave, each side sees different things; the slave s position of oppression enables the slave to attain a privileged consciousness. Lukács later articulated the Marist variation of this theme. The proletariat, by virtue of their distinct position within the circulation of capital, achieves a liberating consciousness. Conventional feminist theory borrowed from these ideas thought to argue that women (as a parallel to Lukács proletariat) see the world differently from men. Men and women each have different perspectives on the world. This is a type of perspectivism: perceptions and understandings of the world are partly determined by the characteristics of the observer, i.e. their perspective. But positivist standpoint theory added two further qualifications to this perspectivism that differentiate it from post-positivist theory. First, in positivist or conventional standpoint theory, some perspectives, in this case, those of women, are superior to men. Women have epistemic privilege. The implication is that women s social knowledge is complete and total, while men s knowledge is partial, if not wrong altogether. Furthermore, positivist standpoint theory grounds this privilege in women s biological characteristics. Nancy Hartsock famously argued that because women are child-bearers, they had an entirely different orientation to the world than men and, by virtue of that difference, better knowledge of the world. The female sense of self is connected to the world while the male sense of self is separate, distinct and even disconnected. The former makes better knowledge [Hartsock 1983, 295]. What I refer to as post-positivist standpoint theory, emerging from later feminist standpoint theories (e.g. Smith [1997b and 2005a]), philosophers of knowledge [Harding 2004b] and STS [Wylie 2003], differs on both of these counts. First, it eschews essentialism for the more basic sociological claim that all knowledge is shaped socially. Post-positivist standpoint theory abjures the biological determination of standpoints with a recognition of social determination. This insight relates but my point here is to make the more etensive claim that different social positions also afford different perspectives. 18 This is partially derived from feminist standpoint theory; it is also derived from the philosopher Sandra Harding s work and STS scholars who advocate the concept situated knowledge and scientific perspectivism, such as Longino [2006]. For some, like Harding [2005], standpoint theory is already post-positivist, but so post-positivist standpoint theory is redundant. But some versions of standpoint theory are not post-positivism, such as conventional feminist standpoint theory as discussed here. 18